> The only thing that makes Ai the opportunity of the millennium is its power to empower us to render Pope and CEO alike irrelevant.

All OpenAI, Google, Anthropic need to do is flip a switch and your AI and your “power” are gone. Or worse, they start making you think what their actual owners want you to think.

You talk a big talk of ending fantastical religions, yet you are just swapping out one eschatology for another.

Your AGI is their Second Coming. Same thing, different crowd.

Well said.

It seems though that a major problem continues to be allegiance to legacy states, not only in the sense of their role as governors and regulators of the industrial age, but even in the (to me, bizarre) belief that they will be the mechanism by which the internet is made safe for use by the body politic.

What we NEED are sincere elder-statesmen and women to see the writing on the wall and lead a peaceful and total deprecation of governments, and of nuclear weapons in particular.

It seems increasingly obvious that the internet is here to stay, that is represents an evolutionary force, and that it doesn't have the capability to recognize borders or tolerate censorship.

What we NEED is to be absolutely sure that these realities are not the basis for wars among men.